


Princesses Don't Marry Smugglers

by roseharpies



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, Not Beta Read, anya is both luke and leia, i wrote this while sick if it doesnt make sense blame the brain fog, we are just going to skate around nicholas ii being darth vader as much as possible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27803365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseharpies/pseuds/roseharpies
Summary: The Romanov family, the royal family of Naboo. Darth Vader, the man who had killed them all. Anastasia, the one who was rumored to have lived. Vlad believed that Anya was Anastasia.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Kudos: 10





	Princesses Don't Marry Smugglers

**Author's Note:**

> Coffee is called “caf” in the Star Wars universe. It’s canon. I googled it. I just want to talk, George Lucas.

It was hard to stay grounded when you were surrounded by stars. The past four years had been a blur, every moment filled with adrenaline, no time for rest. So much loss. Entire planets worth of loss.

It started with her, with amnesia, stranded on a desert planet. A skinny little nobody with no past and no future. She was tossed into an orphanage on Tatooine and assigned the name Anya. She spent years looking up to the stars and dreaming of a better life. A different life. She had the faintest memories of fine gowns and large ballrooms. She wasn’t exactly sure where she had come from, but she knew something terrible must have happened for her to end up here. 

Anya dreamt of light. A deep energy. Voices she couldn’t quite make out the words of. And she dreamt of green. Trees and grass and vibrant life, the kind you didn’t see on Tatooine. 

When she came of age, she found a place with some other girls from the orphanage. Marfa, Dunya, Paulina, the few people she had grown to trust. Once Marfa told her she was lucky she didn’t remember the before. That given the nightmares Anya sometimes had, maybe the before wasn’t something she needed to remember. Maybe she forgot for a reason.

And then there was a repair droid. Old and dusty and blue. Something drew her to it, she felt like it was something she had seen before. Anya hated those moments, when she knew something was familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. It felt sometimes like there was someone in the back of Anya’s mind, yelling the answer, but it was too far away to hear clearly. She knew that she knew this droid, she just didn’t know why. So she bought it. She didn’t need it, and she couldn’t really afford it, but she wanted something familiar. 

A day later the droid tried to run away. Maybe Anya should’ve taken that as a sign, but she was stubborn. She chased it down, and in the process discovered an ageing Jedi knight. He showed her that the droid she had found was carrying top secret plans to the Galactic Empire’s new superweapon. Nothing had been the same since.

The story he had was almost unbelievable. The Romanov family, the royal family of Naboo. Darth Vader, the man who had killed them all. Anastasia, the one who was rumored to have lived. Vlad believed she was Anastasia. 

He gave her two gifts that he said he had been holding onto. One of them was an ornate holoprojector. Normally they were used to transmit messages, but this one was purely for entertainment. It projected the image of two dancers and played a familiar song. The song was so familiar to Anya that it almost hurt. The voice in the back of her head felt like it was fighting to be heard.

The second gift was a lightsaber.

When Anya was a teenager, she imagined a happy reunion with her family. A loving set of parents that had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they had left her in this desert would come and sweep her into their arms. Maybe she’d even have siblings. They’d take her home with them and she’d be warm and content and happy for the rest of her days. She’d finally find that light she’d been dreaming of.

Instead she got a war. A rebellion that looked to her for inspiration. A sword that she was expected to wield. The immense pressure of a galaxy that needed saving. It wasn’t what she thought her life would become by a long shot, and sometimes she wasn’t even sure it was the life she wanted. 

Anya trained. She learned to fly, and to fight, and to lead, and to use the Force. And she didn’t do it with the help of an entire order of Jedi like those who had come before her. All Anya had was Vlad. When they had time, he’d tell her stories of the before.

Anya spent a long time living by the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ aphorism. She pretended that her thoughts weren’t filled with doubt. Then the Death Star happened, and she felt a shift. A genuine confidence. Maybe she could do this. 

There were still days when her life on Tatooine weighed her down. She was told she was a princess, but all she could remember being was an orphan. She was told she was born in a palace, but all she knew was the sand. She felt like she was living in the shadow of Anastasia.

And then there was Dmitry. He was a smuggler who she and Vlad had only gotten involved with because of his ship. They needed fast and safe passage to Alderaan, and he was there. He was arrogant and rude, and he only cared about the rebellion so much as money was involved (or so he said). She hated him. Yet he stuck around. 

When they got to Alderaan and Dmitry was paid, Anya assumed she would never see him again. The morning of the rebel’s attack on the Death Star, she found him lurking around. Hesitating to leave.

“I thought maybe I’d stick around,” he’d said. “Just to see how this plays out.” Anya wasn’t convinced. He had some kind of ulterior motive, she just wasn’t sure what it was. She hadn’t even known he’d been there at the battle until afterwards. It turns out he’d saved her life. Maybe she was too quick to hate him.

After the Death Star, they were awarded medals by the queen of Alderaan. Maybe that was why Dmitry stayed, for the glory.

“Aren't you a little short to be a Jedi?” 

Anya glared at him. The close quarters of the rebel base on Hoth had only made him more annoying, something she didn’t even know was possible.

Dmitry laughed as he walked away, which was cut short by him tripping and knocking over a container of tools. Anya held in her laugh.

“Did you just use the Force to trip me?” Dmitry yelled back at her. He almost,  _ almost,  _ sounded amused.

Anya turned back to him, feigning shock. “The Force isn’t a toy, Dmitry. Of course not.” He shook his head at her before walking away. Maybe Vlad would be disappointed in her, but she wasn’t bothered by that. In these stressful times, small moments of fun were hard to come by. 

Dmitry was now a part of the rebellion, officially. They gave him the rank of captain. It went to his head almost immediately. For the first week afterwards, he had refused to respond to Anya unless she addressed him by his shiny new title. That had ended after she threatened to cut off his hair while he slept. 

Somehow, Vlad and Dmitry got along. They were acting like lifelong friends by the time they arrived on Hoth. Something about Dmitry brought out a more youthful side to Vlad. Anya wondered about that, but she didn’t ask. She got the sense that Vlad had had a family once, too. Maybe even a son that Dmitry reminded him of. 

Despite all of the pressure she was under, Hoth almost felt like a break compared to the rush of planning to take down the Death Star. She actually had free time between all of the rebel meetings and Jedi training. Not much free time, but more than she had had in a long time. 

And Anya still dreamed. Her dreams felt less vague than they were on Tatooine, but the nightmares had gotten worse. She saw flashes of fire, the echoes of screams, the clash of lightsabers. There were faces that she knew, but couldn’t name. She stumbled out of her bunk one night after a particularly painful dream in search of a glass of water. In the base’s haphazard cafeteria she found Dmitry with a mug of caf. 

“A bit late for caffeine, isn’t it?” She asked. He jumped, having not heard or seen her enter the room. Anya found that happening more frequently now. She was learning to walk softly, stealthily, and often startled people on the base. “Sorry.”

Dmitry sighed and sat back down. “I couldn’t sleep, anyway. What are you doing up?”

“Bad dream,” she shrugged. She wasn’t sure why she was being so honest with him. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation. Dmitry patted the empty spot beside him on his bench. 

She sat down, maybe against her better judgement. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Why did you stay?” Anya asked.

Dmitry tilted his head in confusion. “Stay where?”

“With the rebellion, I mean. Why the change of mind?”

He thought for a moment. “It was more… a change of heart.”

He was saving her life, again, much to her chagrin. Anya didn’t like feeling like she owed people, and she  _ really _ didn’t like feeling like she owed Dmitry. The base at Hoth was under attack, and Dmitry had grabbed her hand and dragged her along the soon-to-collapse corridor. They narrowly escaped with Vlad on Dmitry’s stupid ship. 

And now they were on some asteroid in the emptiness of space, trying to repair the aforementioned stupid ship. 

“I’m just trying to help, princess.”

Anya huffed at him in annoyance. “Stop calling me that.” She gets ahold of the lever she was struggling with and pulls it.

“Alright,  _ Anya _ .” 

She rolls her eyes. “You make everything so difficult.”

He smirks down at her. “That’s part of my charm.”

She glares up at him. She hates how much taller than her he is, how she has to look almost straight up just to make eye contact. And she hated how soft his hair looked, and how prominent his dimples were.

Dmitry was annoying when he talked. He was less annoying when he was kissing her. They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

They were at Cloud City, and so was Lily. She was an older, very well dressed, smuggler that Vlad seemed to know. Vlad left a lot of questions about her unanswered in a way that felt very intentional to Anya. Whatever their history was, she seemed friendly enough. She even seemed apologetic when she led them right into a trap.

“My hands are tied, Vladimir. I’m sorry.”

It was all about money, of course. Dmitry owed money, a lot of money, to Jabba the Hutt. Jabba had sent multiple bounty hunters after him, and one had finally caught up with him. 

“I’ll be fine,” he promised Anya, but he didn’t sound convinced. The thing they were planning on doing to him had never been done to a human before. The bounty hunter made sure he knew that. There was a chance this could kill him.

“I love you,” she said. Another moment of bravery. 

“I know.” Annoying as ever.

And then he was frozen in carbonite.

Anya had only heard stories of Darth Vader. She knew he was more android than man, and that he had a penchant for wearing black. Vlad talked about him as if he had known him, but he never went into details. Vlad had a bad habit of doing that. Vader was tall and scary. That labored breathing would haunt her dreams. 

They fought. Despite only having trained for a few years, she managed to hold her own. At least for a while. She wondered if the Sith Lord had been holding back, at least at first.

“Vlad never told you what happened to your father.” Was he taunting her?

“He told me enough! He told me you killed him!”

“No.  _ I _ am your father.”And then everything came crashing down around her. 

The Millenium Falcon is silent now. It’s just Anya and Vlad and Lily. Anya didn’t particularly trust either of them at that moment. 

Two things mattered: Defeating the empire, and saving Dmitry. Anya, perhaps shamefully, focused more on the easier task. If sneaking into the most highly guarded building on Tatooine could be considered easy.

Being on Tatooine again after all of these years was strange. She hadn’t thought much about the desert planet since leaving it. There was a part of her that strangely missed it. She had spent so many years dreaming of being whisked away from it, but it still felt like home. She had rebuilt her life there after getting amnesia, after all.

Saving Dmitry felt like a weight off of Anya’s shoulders. He was disoriented and blind, but he was alive. 

“You really had me worried, scoundrel.” It felt good to finally hold him in her arms.

“ _ Anya? _ ” 

And then they got caught, of course, because that was just their luck. And Jabba sentenced them to death via Sarlacc pit, But that just meant that Anya had two opportunities in a row to save Dmitry. They had to be even at that point.

Back on the ship, Anya catches Dmitry up on what he missed while he was frozen. And then they sit together, looking out at the stars. The silence between them isn’t so uncomfortable anymore.

She knows that they probably never should have met. In another life, this never would have happened. If things had gone the way they should have gone, Anya would be Anastasia. She’d be a full blown princess, and Dmitry would still be a smuggler, and the rebellion would be nothing but a dream. 

It was through a strange and unusual series of events that they ended up here, together. Fighting a war together, flying together. Anya a budding Jedi knight, Dmitry a captain.

The ship felt more alive with Dmitry back on board, almost like it felt his absence. He still annoyed her, but she couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t happy to have him back. 

Endor is so green it almost hurts to look at, but Anya loves it. After years in the desert, and then in space, the forest moon feels welcoming. She wants to stay awhile, after the battle is done. If she wins, which Vlad and Dmitry insist she will. After all of the war and training and stars, Anya needed a vacation. 

During the battle on Endor, Anya uses the Force to throw a vacant speeder bike at a trooper who was about to shoot Dmitry. She gets a grin and an “I love you,” from him in return.

“I know.”

And much later, when the Sith Lords Vader and Sidious are gone and there are no more Death Stars, Anya takes a deep breath. For the first time in four years, there is no imminent danger. Anya is alive. Dmitry is alive. The empire isn’t. 

The rebels have set up camps on Endor. Some go home to their families, but not all of them have a family to return to. For some, the rebellion was the only family they ever knew. Anya wasn’t quite sure where she stood. 

Anya’s memory of the before is still in fragments, but now she finds peace in it. The things she did know of her past felt like they were enough. And knowing what she did now, she knew she could never be Anastasia again. She had forged her own shadow, and no longer felt the need to live up to that name. She wasn’t Anastasia the princess, she was Anya the Jedi master. The voice in the back of her head was calm. There were still people who called her that name, called her princess, and she let them. She had Dmitry to call her by her real name. 

They rested together in a hammock on Endor, surrounded by trees and covered by the stars. The gentle rise and fall of Dmitry’s chest as he breathed comforted her. 

“I’m glad you stayed,” she said. 

“So am I.”

Anya didn’t know what the future held. There could be more wars, more sword wielding, more pressure. But right now she had this, the forest and her rebel captain. And that was all that mattered.


End file.
